Event Details

Between 1799 and 1834, thirty-two Russian settlements were renamed in honor of European regions that had been liberated or conquered by Russian soldiers. That's how in the southern Ural mountains, villages gained names like Paris, Berlin, Leipzig, Warsaw, Balkans, and other such.

"How are the lives of these ordinary Russians affected by living in 'European' cities, while never having traveled outside the borders of their own native country, or possibly even their settlements? How has this influenced their everyday existence? Has this duality of perception significantly altered their lives? Roman Makhmutov and Tatiana Gavrilova explore these questions in their Project." – Alexey Nikishin, photographer, Moscow.

"Why it is so important is that much of the old Soviet existence is shrinking away, being bulldozed over and the space taken over by a new modern (i.e. anonymous, generic, global) architecture, what will be lost is the specific, unique embodiment of Russia’s sense of itself in the world iterated by the vernacular architecture and how its society renders itself visually. So it is critical this is all documented before it disappears." – John Wildgoose, London, October 2015